EASA Best Practice Awards

The Best Practice Awards took place during EASA’s Biannual Meetings in Athens, and this year, for the first time, initiatives from two years were awarded in a double ceremony: Best Practice Awards 2016 and Best Practice Awards 2017.

The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) has won the Gold Award at Best Practice Awards 2016 for the Mobile App “ASCIonline”. ASCI launched its Consumer Complaint Mobile App – ASCIonline to receive consumer complaints against false advertisement, thus providing an easy and convenient access for lodging complaints, which resulted in an increase of ASCI’s reach across India.

Consejo de Autorregulación y Ética Publicitaria (CONAR) Mexico has won the Gold Award at Best Practice Awards 2017 for the Certification on the Advertising and Ethical Framework (within CONAR’s e-learning programme PEC). The purpose of the Certification is to prepare industry professionals, public officers, academics and students on the most important topics of advertising, self-regulation, local regulation and the basic criteria to perform the holistic analysis of campaigns and advertising pieces.

The Silver award was won in the 2016 edition by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) UK for their Prioritisation Principles - a set of high-level principles guiding the ASA in making decisions on what its regulatory priorities should be. In the 2017 edition, Silver was awarded to Reklamombudsmannen (Ro) Sweden for their workshops about influencer marketing in social media. The workshops were organised in order to inform and educate a new and emerging group of creators in social media on marketing ethics and the ICC Code.

The judges awarded Bronze in the 2016 Best Practice Awards edition to Auto Regulação Publicitária (ARP) Portugal for their work on creating trainings on rules and ethics of advertising and other forms of commercial communication. Within the training, 8 modules were developed, based on several questions, to give the trainees concrete answers with a realistic application scope.

The 2017 Best Practice Bronze Award was won by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) UK for their work on broadband pricing. ASA’s research in collaboration with Ofcom found that the then approach to presenting pricing in fixed broadband ads was likely to confuse and mislead consumers about the cost of broadband services. Their work on broadband pricing has helped make broadband ads easier to understand for consumers across the UK.

A Special Mention was awarded to the Advertising Standards Canada (ASC) for the new interpretation guideline they introduced to the ASC code. The new Interpretation Guideline requires clear and prominent disclosure of any material connection between an influencer and the endorsed product or service, thus helping consumers know when a blog/post/review has been sponsored.

The EASA Best Practice Awards are presented every year to the self-regulatory organisations that have most effectively implemented an element of the EASA Best Practice Model – a set of operational standards for advertising standards bodies. The jury is composed of representatives from the advertising industry associations (advertisers, agencies and media) members of EASA.